I recently bought a used T21 ThinkPad laptop form a local shop specialising in second hand PC’s. It’s a 700mhz Pentium 3 with CD-R and DVD-R (not writers) and a single USB 1, so I guess it’s about 4 or 5 years old.
The CD-DVD drive is a ‘cassette’ type which can be replaced by a floppy drive cassette which I got with the machine. It looks like the hard drive has been wiped clean before they installed XP Home as the ThinkPad features are missing.
Problem is that the CD drive will not read any of my back-up or music compilation disks created on blank CD’s (on my main PC). It will however read from ‘original’ data and music CD’s, and some of them are quite old. My blank disks are recent purchases and named makes. I’ve tried duplicating the copies onto other disks but still no good. I’ve also tried the disks on another two laptops without difficulty, one of the laptops is older than this one and it seems to be just this one that’s giving the problem.
I do know that in the ‘early’ days of CD’s that there were problems reading certain media but I thought that these had disappeared now.
I’ve tackled the shop about it and they say it’s my disks and not the drive and they’re refusing to replace the drive.
Any suggestions please?
Recommended Answers
Jump to PostTry burning your CDs at a lower speed. The slower the burn speed, the less chance of errors and the more chance of them being readable in other drives. Also try burning your CDs onto higher quality, more expensive blank media. ;)
Jump to PostCDR troubles? Check this list:
- Most older drives can see CDR discs, but NOT the CDRW discs - an extra LASER of a different color is needed for CDRW playback.
- Most early DVD drives cannot see either CDR or CDRW disks, because the LASER color is …
Jump to PostRead the rules!
"Do not piggyback threads (aka "hijack" threads) by posting your question as a reply to another question."
Do NOT hijack other peoples threads, especially ones from 2005!
All 9 Replies
We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.